The Dead Furnace
The Dead Furnace was a brilliantly twisted solution to an impossible problem. The Ironworks was too large and too mechanized to run on coal and biodiesel alone. It needed more energy than the pre-fall world's ruins could provide. Desperate Rust City engineers and visiting Abbey scientists conceived an answer that used the most abundant fuel available in the wasted world: the dead themselves.
The Furnace burned the undead for energy. Boxcars of shamblers were brought from across the Ironworks, but the bulk of the fuel simply walked in on its own. Workers with long prods funneled rivers of walking corpses along highways, drawn from miles away by the Furnace's lights and noise. The glow of the machine dominated downtown Rust City like a great volcanic maw, and the river of shambling dead approaching it could be seen from the highest points in Rail City.
The stink choked all but the sturdiest Irons. Mountains of greasy grey-black ash surrounded the outskirts, the residue of countless burned bodies. When the wind blew, mighty clouds of that ash drifted across the landscape like foul snow, stinging eyes and coating throats. The energy produced was drawn off and sent mostly to nearby Rail City, keeping the empire's factories and electric lights running on a fuel that would never run out as long as the dead kept walking.
The Dead Furnace was the Ironworks at its most essential: brutal, pragmatic, and willing to turn horror into utility. It powered an empire that enslaved the living by burning the dead, and no one who saw it ever forgot the sight or the smell.
The Furnace burned the undead for energy. Boxcars of shamblers were brought from across the Ironworks, but the bulk of the fuel simply walked in on its own. Workers with long prods funneled rivers of walking corpses along highways, drawn from miles away by the Furnace's lights and noise. The glow of the machine dominated downtown Rust City like a great volcanic maw, and the river of shambling dead approaching it could be seen from the highest points in Rail City.
The stink choked all but the sturdiest Irons. Mountains of greasy grey-black ash surrounded the outskirts, the residue of countless burned bodies. When the wind blew, mighty clouds of that ash drifted across the landscape like foul snow, stinging eyes and coating throats. The energy produced was drawn off and sent mostly to nearby Rail City, keeping the empire's factories and electric lights running on a fuel that would never run out as long as the dead kept walking.
The Dead Furnace was the Ironworks at its most essential: brutal, pragmatic, and willing to turn horror into utility. It powered an empire that enslaved the living by burning the dead, and no one who saw it ever forgot the sight or the smell.
