I love the battleground thing. I like the idea of keeping the pairings in seperate cities though. Let's keep the brother and sister in Texas so that we can paint that scape when we want to. We can focus on CA and work on that story first if you like and if you (or I) want to open another thread for Texas we can write that couple as we see fit as well. 

I think perhaps the idea of having the gangs in control could lead to both sides have differing aspects of the disease, both sides having bio-weapons that they've developed from their own illness, like a zombie amongst them that is super strong and highly infectious or something fucked up like that. 

Our CA peeps have a lot more going on. Let's start there and we'll have the first scene/setting be the location of the run-down hospital. ??