The Ramparts
The Ramparts were Motor City's defining feature: a massive wall of stacked cars ringing the entire settlement, six to ten vehicles high, rusted and tangled together with cables, chains, and overgrown vegetation. During the Ironworks era, the wall served simultaneously as defense, civic monument, and execution site.
Eight Mile Road split the enclosed area down the center, with the Ramparts extending north and south of the town. From outside, the sheer waste of usable parts was striking. In a city that revered automobiles, the deliberate sacrifice of so many cars was both a boast and a threat: "We will waste all this; what makes you think we will not waste you?"
The wall was built over several years after the Fall, when suburban populations fled back to the city center chased by the zed. The resourceful survivors mounted a massive defense and stacked the abandoned vehicles into a barrier that kept the dead and the raiders on the other side. Medina-Dearborn compound provided additional defense to the west, outside the wall.
The Ramparts also served the Ironworks' justice. Anyone convicted of breaking the law in Motor City was bound and tossed into a trunk on one of the wall cars, left to die screaming of heat and dehydration. Those who reanimated inside the sealed trunks gave the wall a constant low moan, a sound that rose and fell with the wind and chilled every new visitor. The wall did not merely protect Motor City. It was Motor City: proud, wasteful, resourceful, and merciless.
Eight Mile Road split the enclosed area down the center, with the Ramparts extending north and south of the town. From outside, the sheer waste of usable parts was striking. In a city that revered automobiles, the deliberate sacrifice of so many cars was both a boast and a threat: "We will waste all this; what makes you think we will not waste you?"
The wall was built over several years after the Fall, when suburban populations fled back to the city center chased by the zed. The resourceful survivors mounted a massive defense and stacked the abandoned vehicles into a barrier that kept the dead and the raiders on the other side. Medina-Dearborn compound provided additional defense to the west, outside the wall.
The Ramparts also served the Ironworks' justice. Anyone convicted of breaking the law in Motor City was bound and tossed into a trunk on one of the wall cars, left to die screaming of heat and dehydration. Those who reanimated inside the sealed trunks gave the wall a constant low moan, a sound that rose and fell with the wind and chilled every new visitor. The wall did not merely protect Motor City. It was Motor City: proud, wasteful, resourceful, and merciless.
