The Walking Dead: Ghost

Chapter 1: Woodsmoke and Rabbit.

She smelled the fire before she saw it.

Frankie slowed her steps, letting the trees swallow her. Smoke, woodsmoke, and something else - meat cooking. Her stomach turned over, but she stayed still. Listened.

Frankie's stomach growled, loud enough that she pressed a hand against it like that would help. The smell of rabbit meat drifting from the clearing was torture. She turned her back on the fire and dropped to her knees beside her backpack.

Just find something. Anything.

She unzipped the main compartment and dug past the rolled-up shirt, the half-empty water bottle, the small first-aid kit she barely knew how to use. Her fingers brushed fabric, a lighter, the corner of something crinkly.

She pulled it out. A sleeve of Ritz crackers, slightly crushed. And underneath it, a peanut butter protein bar, the wrapper soft from the heat.

Her mouth watered. She was about to tear into the crackers when her hand hit something else. Paper. Folded small, tucked against the side of the bag like it was meant to stay hidden.

She pulled it out and unfolded it. Her brother's handwriting. Messy, slanted, familiar in a way that hurt.

"Frankie -

Found these in a car. They're yours. You deserve them more.

Stay alive."

She read it twice. Her vision blurred on the second pass. He'd written this before everything. Before she lost them all. He'd found food and stashed it in her bag instead of keeping it for himself.

The Ritz crackers crunched in her grip as she held them too tight. She set them down carefully, folded the note again, and pressed it against her chest for a long moment before tucking it into her front pocket.

Then she ate the crackers, one by one, and tried not to think about how quiet the world was without him. Without any of them.

Frankie chewed the last cracker slowly, letting it dissolve on her tongue. She folded the wrapper as small as she could and tucked it into her pocket - no trace, no evidence. The note sat warm against her chest.

She settled back against the tree, pulled her knees up, and tried to sleep. The forest creaked and whispered around her. An owl called somewhere distant. She closed her eyes and willed her body to rest.

It didn't work.

Her stomach cramped - a sharp, hollow ache that made her curl in on herself. Then it growled. Loud. Loud enough that she clapped a hand over her belly like that would muffle it.

" Stupid. So stupid. "

She lay there for what felt like an hour, listening to the silence, thinking about the crackers she'd already eaten. How good they were. How much she wanted more.

She thought about the camp. The one man. He'd been sitting by the fire earlier, whittling something, alone. She'd watched him long enough to know there was no one else. Just him. And a bag of food sitting right there by the logs.

He was probably asleep by now.

And she was so hungry.

" I'm light on my feet, she told herself. He won't hear me. He's just some guy. "

She pushed up slowly, silent as a shadow, and crept through the trees toward the glow of the dying embers.

The camp was quiet. The man was lying on his side near the fire, one arm tucked under his head, still as sleep. His crossbow lay on the ground beside him, close enough to grab.