Four bicycles pedalled through a sodden and unkind land. Their drivers were alone amongst the wails of the wind and the shuddering sheets of noise in the sky. The rain teemed down hard on the cyclists’ helmets and stung at their faces, and the cold turned their lips and noses into red, numb patches of smarting pain.  The road beneath them had been deteriorating from an autobahn to a bucolic rut for some time. By now at every rotation the mud packed and congealed further around their tyres, and at every hit of the sky’s sharp drops the earth broke down to swamp.
Three of those cyclists were gazing back through rainy mist for any movement behind them that offered some divergence from the grim, darkening, untraveled forest which thrashed with the thunder, not in a way that the men might commiserate with, for the trees appeared rather to take part in some vast natural concert of vivacity, which our four alone were excluded from and suffered in.
The fourth, leading bike did not turn and open himself up to the certain disappointment that the empty and already longed for road behind them offered, but it was he who, in a swerve and splash of mud, pulled over first, and the three behind followed him, dismounting and wheeling their bikes alongside themselves. Now off the road, they tried to shout to one another above the storm, and made signs to shelter together by the trunks which surrounded them. They ran from tree to tree for some minutes, only to find again and again that the storm had not left so much as a shrub in any sort of state to protect a group of four.
Alas, the natural world knew better than these strangers. The trees were not hostile for nothing, something dangerous hid in that forest.
It was the youngest of this group of all young cyclists that told, with a mixture of pointing and windswept shouts, the others about the mouth of a shaft that he glimpsed, deeper still into the woods. It was immersed in the forest, out of view from the road, and initially they thought it was a cave, but as they drew closer even the forces of nature, made dark with saturation, could not obscure the unnaturally sharp, dull-iron opening. They pulled away the tree that had given everything to reclaim this spot lost to nature, revealing and stepping into the dryness of forgotten rail tracks and old, brown metal crushed to orange dust under their unfamiliar living touch.
There was a stale air within the chamber, and the tracks ran on into black nothingness. They did not have to stoop, and yet even the contrast from the wringing-wet outside was not enough for the four to ignore the remorseless dreariness of their new surroundings. Great wooden trunks ran along the walls of the cave to act as pillars, interrupting the menace of walls made from bare stone that proved this channel had been carved out by chipping away and away through the forested slope, which yet remained in the absence of the mine’s workers.
Sheltering in this scene the men caught their breath at last, bent and panting, from the harshness of the elements more than their long ride. And in the lip of that bleak surrounding, even in such a long-undisturbed place, they were surrounded by little noises bouncing back and forth. Drippings and dribbles and sprinkles and plops, the weeping of a sad and uncomfortable setting that would have no rest and neither would anything within.
A kinder noise arrived as the youngest cyclist from before spoke first, in English,
“Boy we’re lucky this was here.” He looked around at the others, grinning, “We must have gotten separated from the others at that cross roads back there.” The three other cyclists nodded for a moment at this, and then looked out with shivering silence at the rain whipping away at the treetops.
A drop dripped.
“I’m Lars by the way.” He said, perfectly friendlily and with a niceness apparently quite undamped despite everything.
The three cold shoulders turned at this, and made awkward introductions of their own, all once again in English although not all of them were born into the language,
“Hello, I’m Julian.” said the tall man
“Hello, I’m Noah Bly Junior.” said the man with long hair
“I’m Owen, hello.” said the man without either of those distinguishing features.

“You guys were really tiring me out back there.” Lars laughed looking around with amiable eyes, just quick enough to not let another silence settle in.
“We were really speeding up,” Said Julian, seriously, “probably why we lost the rest of the pack and are wherever we are, actually.”
“That and the weather, I couldn’t see anything. Good thing we pulled over when we did. It’s only getting worse out there.” Noah said, looking out into the world’s whirling.
Lars was relieved at these contributions, and the slowly rolling conversation that started on from them. He didn’t like silence at all, hated awkwardness especially, and as a result made himself break through the barriers of people as quickly as possible. He had a way of making even highly-strung people relax, quiet people come out of their shell. He liked being in company very much, and had mastered his good-natured, disarming quality to the point where he got along with everybody, as long as they were talking.
Owen was not talking. He was trying, he was laughing at jokes and had an expression on he was hoping looked friendly. The problem was he couldn’t find anywhere to jump in, the gaps in the talking were always filled by someone else just a second too early, and what he was going to add would sound forced and contrived anyway, because it was just that.
In spite of all these thoughts busying Owen’s head he could not help but notice and marvel at Lars. While every one of his own thoughts were dogged by self-consciousness, Lars was perfectly at ease, and relaxingly charming. It was strange how the less you seemed to be trying the better you were at mingling and entertaining. It was strange, and it was disgusting, Owen decided. The less work you do the more effective you are. He was one of those obsessed with self-improvement, indeed that was why he found himself in this cycling race, and because of that he hated anything that came easily to others. In Owen’s own mind he had to work for everything he had, and was immensely satisfied at Lars’s earlier acknowledgement of how fast they were going, in spite of everything he was: short, ugly, asthmatic, with a tremor in his hands, he was more than keeping up.
While Owen energised himself with self-congratulations as he had done many times before, the air had turned frigid. With it the rain tempered and became more of a numbing, comfortable drizzle and the cyclists stared out into it blankly. Or apparently blankly, rather. For they all were examining themselves and the humans and world around them with unusually consuming contemplation. All these young men were thoughtful and were prone to getting lost in their own brains, but they found themselves, in this strange place amongst the outside, beyond the rush of their bikes with the gently slowing rain, to be giving everything particular observation.
There was a momentary gap in this observation which brought Julian to realise what an idiot he was being. He actually thought this to himself quite often. Here they were without phones or any other way to call for help, waiting for someone to pick them up, and yet they were totally out of sight from the main road. What were they waiting for if they couldn’t even be seen if the service cars did happen to pass by! He told this to the others who responded more or less suitably, with a laughing reply by Lars, an anxious “Oh yeah” from Owen, and a sort of wise-sounding “Good thought,” from Noah. His plan, so that he didn’t have to stand out in the rain waiting for the car which may or may not pass by, was to leave his bike out on the edge of the road, and hopefully if the service car full of race officials did pass by they’d see it, pull over, and look around for them. So out into the depths of the weather he marched, squelching through the moistened earth in his heavy, weighted cycling shoes. At every rut and root the bike he was wheeling alongside himself got stuck in an incredibly annoying and repetitive way which made one angry and flustered which made Julian feel very hot and as though he needed to get revenge on the grooves that held him up as soon as possible.
God he hated that feeling. He never felt more powerless than when driven to rage by a root. He became a sort of comic skit in those seconds, and as he lapsed into Homer Simpson through blunders that went unseen by any living eye, he still felt the world laughing away at him. Julian didn’t need to be laughed at, he was perfectly aware how stupid he was. And look at what he was doing now, he couldn’t wheel his bike to the road without embarking on some phony, pathetic soul-searching. Nevertheless, it was a good time for him to get a grip over his babyish slips into intense anger over nothing. Well not nothing, but things which were his own fault. He had to remember that, it was his fault. This whole present situation was his fault, he’d been leading this group of bikes and had obviously and stupidly taken a wrong turn and led three other men into the gloomy circumstances they found themselves in now. You’ve got to remind yourself of that, because no one else is going to.
The sombre clouds rolling into one another formlessly in the sky signalled in a new stage of the endlessly evolving elements around them. The rain trickled on, but the sense of wild frenzy which had occupied their final frantic moments rushing for cover had gradually battered away into bleakness, and any sense of frightening vigour which this wilderness once had had now evaporated.
Julian leaned his bike against a tree just by the road. He hoped it was obvious enough there as a lone piece of human interference amongst the sopping trees. He looked up and down the road in case of everything, but he couldn’t hear any sign of cars. He thought about cycling on to find someone and go back to the others, but there was the rain picking up again, adopting at least a piece of its earlier ferocity and the wind maintained its inconsistent blustery blows. Julian rushed back to the tunnel, once again soaking, but almost happy with the fact that this was better than he deserved for the mess he’d decided he had got the four young cyclists into.