Day 1,350

There's not many places for the dead to go, I'll be the first to admit that, but the grove needs to be guarded all the same and who better to do it than someone with nothing to lose? Best case scenario I live long enough to raise an apprentice to carry on once I'm down the grove myself, worst case scenario some poor bastard's going to have to learn the job the hard way.

It's not too hard a job, much as I may complain. At the end if the day if the dead are still down in the grove then I've done my job right. Now there has been the odd escapee but they don't have the mental capacity to plan that, it just sort of happens.

The dead wander about - it's in their nature to follow the scent of blood on the wind and more often than not they smell me. I used to be worried about it at first, took ridiculous precautions like west of denim under a full body of chainmail and carrying a fully loaded shotgun at all times but now I just bring a pistol when I'm checking the borders.

Sometimes I'll see someone I used to know down in the grove, all rotting and bloodthirsty as the dead generally are. It made me sad once but I've long since stopped seeing them as anything more than corpses with functional stomachs.