One moment she was slowly backing away from the boy, in order to give him space to get up and brush himself off, and the next, her neck was taken in a hard grip, and she knew it would begin to bruise not too long afterwards. She felt him shove her to the ground and promptly pin her, with one hand on her shoulder and the full weight of his body atop hers.
She felt the cold blade of the knife settle against her throat.
It wasn't as if she couldn't have fought back. However, she didn't feel as if it were right to do so. She had been the one that had pounced upon him first. She was the one that was foolish enough to allow The Man to take her. She was the one that was holding Reason and Charlie back.
She deserved to die.
Death would be a welcome relief to this hell-hole called life.
Before Anita realized what had occurred, the boy was pushing himself off of her, and a familiar voice was speaking to her, while the girl's arms wound around her body. Anita's eyes were closed, but when the arms went around her, and the girl spoke, she immediately recognized her.
Slowly her eyes opened, yet she had never once been afraid of what she had thought was the unstoppable death. She had merely closed them so as not to look at the boy in, what he would undoubtedly think, was hatred and disgust. However, she did not blame him. It was merely human nature to do what you could to survive.
She pressed her lips together and slowly sat up, rubbing at her throat. She stared at Dani for several moments, before beaming a smile at the girl and waggling her fingers under the girl's nose, her version of a 'hello'. She managed to pull out of her arms and push herself up, but stumbled a little and bumped into a tree, which she promptly grabbed onto.
Her throat was constricting.
Her air pipes were clogging.
She could feel her heart begin to beat harder, faster, in an attempt to keep up with the oxygen being cut off.
She collapsed to her knees, her breaths wheezing through her throat, one hand clutching her chest while the other wound around her neck.
"Dani," she rasped out. "Asthma ..." she choked, beginning to tremble.
She slumped forward, her entire body shaking. Her vision was beginning to darken, dim, the still of the night settling around her.
"Can't ... Breathe ..." she wheezed.
There were only a few things in that moment that she could still hear. She could hear Dani and the boy; she could hear birds chirping in the trees; she could hear footsteps racing through the woods, which came to an abrupt stop not too far away; and she could hear, in the far distance, due to her trained ears, a single pair of light footsteps.
Despite her inability to breathe at that current moment, she forced herself up and onto trembling legs.
"Here ..." she gasped, stumbling over to Dani. She grabbed the girl's arm to hold her up. "Woman ..." She pointed West of them, her eyes wide with fear, panic obvious in them. There was no time for her to allow her fear of speaking to hinder her ability to warn the others, even if it meant she would die, left behind due to her asthma attack. Her voice was soft, however, a combination of her years of silence and her breathless state.
"She's that way ... Two-fourths mile ... Charlie ... Reason ... There," she pointed to their East, "Ten feet ..." She grabbed the girl's arm in an even tighter grip. "Two more ... Boys ... Behind those trees ..." she pointed to their North. Her bag had to be somewhere nearby. She must have dropped it in the process of falling from the tree and being attacked by the boy.
Her vision grew darker, wavier, and she slumped a bit against the girl's side. She dropped to her hands and knees and felt around on the ground, barely able to see at this point, before her hand closed around a bag that had fallen beneath a bush. She wrenched it out and snapped it open, dug inside of it, retrieved an inhaler, and promptly shoved it before her face.
As soon as the medicine had made it's way into her system, her lungs began to expand, her throat began to return to normal, and she laid there for a few moments longer. Finally, she slipped the inhaler into her pocket, swung the bag over her shoulder, and shakily pushed herself up, clearing her throat in the process.
"I know I haven't spoken to you before, and trust me, I'm going to return to my silent state as soon as we are relatively safe from harm from the woman. However, at this current moment in time, The Woman is approximately two-fourths of a mile West of us. Reason, a boy named Charlie, and I, were all together until I climbed this tree and tackled this boy here," she pointed at Darius. "Reason and Charlie are ten feet East of us. There are two more boys, undoubtedly our age and escaping from The Woman also, not too far behind those trees," she told the two, her arms crossed. Her voice was hoarse from her asthma attack and her having gone silent for so long, yet it was audible and understandable.
"The Woman is closing in. There's no time for you two to argue with me, especially not you," she pointed at Darius. She looked over at Dani. "Find out who those two boys are and meet me back here in two minutes. If those two minutes are up, I'm going to come looking for you," she told the two. With that, she disappeared into the bushes, ducking and sliding beneath the limbs.
She hopped up behind Reason and Charlie, managing a tiny smile. "Boo," she said quietly, moving over between the two. "I don't have time to explain, but I figured it's better for all of us if I drop my silence for now and make sure everyone stays, well, okay. For now, you two just need to trust me. Come on," she ordered, and started through the bushes, walking this time so they could keep up, yet keeping was ear trained on the sound of The Woman's footsteps. She soon returned to the spot where she had told Dani and the boy to meet her at.
"We'll wait here for one minute and twenty-two seconds, and then I'll have to go looking for Dani and the others," she informed the two. She leaned back against a tree to wait, her arms and ankles crossed, her face towards the ground, her entire focus concentrated on listening for The Woman.
