The Fifty-Fifty Feeling

Why have I brought along cowards like you? Switch off the torch at once!  Furiously Sabine turns to Stefan and Jürgen.“We’re on the run, and not on a scout’s expedition for little boys.” 

“Sorry, but we thought…” comes back the barely audible reply.

“I just don’t understand it. They’ve caught you twice already.  This time you’re dragging me into it too.”

There is no answer, but Sabine can really sense the fear of the two of them.  One of them stumbles. There is a treacherous cracking sound, a slight groan.  “Damn it, my foot.”

“My goodness.We’ve only just started out!  How should this…oh,sugar !”  Sabine has run into some barbed wire.  They climb carefully over it.

“At least we’re going in the right direction”, she thinks.

The path through the woods ends abruptly.  The three of them grope their way forwards…Sabine switches on the torch, but holds her coat protectively over the beam.  She gets the compass from her trouser pocket. 

“North, we’re going in the right direction.”

“Do you really think so?” asks Jürgen anxiously.

“Yes but you’re welcome to go south.”

“No” whispers Jürgen, “but we can’t go any further this way.”

Sabine has to admit he is right.  The wood is getting more and more dense.  Thorny bushes block their way.  Nature has formed an impenetrable wall.  The three of them stop, uncertain as to what to do.  It starts to drizzle lightly.  It is August but it feels cold. 

“We must get through this wall of bushes somehow.”  Sabine tries to talk herself into being brave.  Determined she presses on, feeling for gaps.

“We can only crawl through, force our way through.  Luckily we haven’t got any luggage with us.”

Partly on all fours, partly slithering along on their stomachs, they fight their way through the undergrowth.Cynically, Sabine thinks that the military training that they had to do during their time at school is proving to be exceedingly useful. Scratched and exhausted, they eventually reach a path through the wood.  Sabine switches on her torch briefly. 

“Tyre tracks, my God, that’s the border guards!”

“Perhaps that’s the path we were on before,” whispers Stefan.

“We’re bound to have been going around in circles. Come on, let’s go!” says Jürgen in a quavering voice.

“Whatever, I’m going to look for the second barbed wire fence.”  Sabine tries to make her voice sound firm.  Dejectedly the three of them walk along the path through the wood.

“There’s a light over there. That must be the border soldiers.”

“But which ones?  Austrian or Hungarian?”

“Perhaps they’re refugees, like us?”

“We could give them a signal with the light” considers Jürgen.

“You have been watching too much West