"And so we are gathered here today to honor..." The preacher droned on, ignorant of the family's sorrow. As the casket was lowered slowly into the ground, the hooded figure standing at the head of the grave began rhythmically shoveling dirt onto it. After about half an hour, it was finished and the family left. Once they were gone, the figure impaled the ground with the shovel and leaned on it casually. With a lazy movement, it removed its hood, revealing a heavily scarred woman. She took a deep breath of the cool evening air and sighed.

"Oi, Doctòr. Què gusta con el cuerpo?" she queried him. The preacher looked at her through half closed lids and shrugged.

"Leave it here, I suppose. We have more than enough land." The woman nodded sagely, as if that was the most obvious conclusion. She picked up the shovel with a grunt and slung it onto her shoulder.

"Tell me, Koa, why do you stay here with me?" She turned and looked at the priest in surprise. He'd become quite moody and distant lately. She was worried about him.

"Padrè? Why are you asking? You can't do the job on your own. I'm able to do it. It makes sense." The man shook his head and looked at her.

"No, I meant why do you still stay. I can just as easily hire help. You do this morbid work for free. It doesn't make sense." He didn't mention that they'd been working together for twenty years, or the fact that she didn't age, or the fact that she was a zombie. These things he just accepted early on. The fact that she hadn't left the mortician business was what bothered him. In twenty years, she had learned more about death from him than she did when she experienced it. She'd made caskets, cremated corpses, and conducted funerals under his wing without complaint, and without loosing her sunny disposition.

"I do because I enjoy. There are no other reasons to do something," Koa replied matter-of-factly. The old man nodded to himself and opened the door to their shack. He went about his nightly ritual as Koa prepared his dinner. The priest sighed in appreciation as he sipped the soup she fixed him, glad to have her once again. She bowed from the waist and left the house, beginning patrol of the graveyard. She didn't sleep, so the peaceful routine of walking the cemetary kept her refreshed and ready for the next day.

When the sun crested the horizon, Koa went back to the house, ready to make breakfast. However, the scene she discovered was far from peaceful. She had walked in on a crazed psychopath stabbing her adopted father, the priest, to death. With a wretched, screeching cry, she leapt upon the murderer's back and bit him on the shoulder, tearing out a chunk of flesh. The raging zombie woman continued to eat her way into his body, showing the man what a true psychopath does to people.

After she killed the man, she mourned over her dead father and her failure as a guard. Koa left the house, still covered in blood, and slowly moved about the cemetary in a daze.