Undercart

The Circle of Life Strikes Twice

The Great Spell Plague was a scourge on the continent of Arrhynsia, killing hundreds of thousands and filling the world with undead. It was a painful and horrifying disease, and even more terrifying, it filled the world with the living dead. Mother would die today, but be scratching at the window to be let in tommorrow night.
It was - unsettling.
And more, it was completely disruptive to whatever passed for normal life in Arrhynsia. The dead were indifferent to light, indifferent to food, indifferent to any of the things that motivated them in life. They seemed mindless, and the threat of zombies kept the entire world in lockdown.
Until Human and Dwarven and Elven necromancers convinced their governments to select a location, Styx, to put the dead in a special area which the necromancers enchanted, with specially trained magic workers - Pile Tenders to bury the dead. It was a great idea. Except...
The dead were here.
and
the
Pile
was
in Styx.
That was a real problem, because no one was really able to get them from home to Styx. People barricaded themselves into their homes. The economies of every major nation were collapsing. Cities were turning into gho... zombie towns. Everywhere you looked, it was zombies.
Until Rudolf Guittard, an extrodinary necromancer, devised a new vehicle, the Undercart. Capture your walking dead, place them in the Undercart, and they would immediately fall asleep and stay that way until you got them to Styx and took them out. There was a time limit on how long the Undercart could keep the undead quiet, but it was a couple weeks - long enough to gather a cartful and take them to Styx so the Pile Tenders could take them to the Pile. All you needed was a brave undertaker to round up the undead and get them into the cart. An undead patrol officer if you will.
Fat chance.
But put enough money on the table, and there'll be a sucker willing to risk his life to pick it up. The governments of Arrhynsia made an offer that some people didn't refuse, and the roads began to refill again - now with undercarts headed to Styx.
It took a couple years. A year for the disease to die down, a year to clear the zombies from the streets. A year for life to begin to be normal again - and then suddenly, the economies of Arrhynsia took off, everyone was thrilled to return to normal. Crops were planted, the markets re-opened, and people got back to work - fighting back the more reasonable demons of poverty and starvation to which they preferred to be accustomed.
And everyone blessed the undertakers - and the undercarts.