Free As the Light Dies by M.D. Woodham

was, looking out at it and thinking it was deep and actually being out in it, trying to walk through it were two totally different things, he traipsed through it shocked at its depth.
    Not gonna be many cars in here for a while , he thought, and little did he know how right he was!
    The path at the back of the car park came out on to the main western road out of Inverness that lead down the side of Loch Ness, there was only one set of vehicle tracks on the road, they were on the left so the vehicle had been heading in to town.
    Dean could tell that the vehicle had been a 4x4 by the shape and width of the chunky tyre marks.
    Dean walked on and it felt like forever for him to reach the canal bridge that was in reality only twenty yards or so along the road. The deep snow made it hard going and the driving freezing wind was against him blinding him with the blizzard.
    When he finally crossed over the bridge and started traipsing along the snow bound towpath he tried a quick look up, but it was useless, the blizzard was too thick for him to see any further than his outstretched hand. He carried o n slowly , he did n’ t want to wander too close to the edge of the bank, he knew the canal was frozen over, had been for two weeks now and it was hard to make out where the bank ended and the canal started with the snow covering everything.
    After a while of traipsing along, he felt like his cheeks were about to crack so he turned his back in to the wind taking a brief break. He risked a look up hoping that with the wind behind him h e’ d see a little better than before. He was awestruck and understood in an instant what Brian had meant.
    The entire eastern skyline was dark grey, practically black!
    Angry dark swirls moved around within the vast cloud!
    “Holy shit!” Dean said out loud barely believing his eyes.
    The news was right, it is coming for u s , he thought. Then his view closed in again and a gust of icy wind slapped his face forcing him to bury his face deep in to his scarf again. He pushed on again but after a few steps he tried looking up again out of curiosity, he could n’ t help it now that h e’ d seen what was coming.
    Shielding his eyes from the wind he could just see the cloud, the edge between the darkness of the ash and the early morning winter sun looked like an enormous cloud of bonfire smoke closing in over the top of the city or night catching up with day.
    Bizarre , he thought before he had to bury his face again, as the wind whipped his face and dried his eyes. He started walking again thinking it best to get home as soon as he could.
    He carried on constantly buffeted and chilled by the wind hating every step, he could n’ t bear the wind, he never had liked it, cold and hot were ok but cooler was better and he loved the rain, but the wind. He detested it.
    Then after walking for another ten minutes or so determined not to stop again, he was stopped in his tracks by a fallen branch as thick as his waist that was lying across the towpath. He looked it up and down before attempting to step over and saw that the end of the branch with all its tiny offshoots had broken through the ice over the canal.
    He pushed the branch with his foot and watched broken slabs of ice bob up and down around the sunken end as he rocked it. The ice was so thick that it made Dean think of ice breakers at work in the Arctic biting their way through ice sheets miles across.
    A gust of wind buffeted him hard from the side while he was standing on one leg knocking him off balance. He tried to counteract the wind by leaning in to it but he put himself further off balance and his other leg slipped out from under him and he fell!
    He reached out blindly with both hands as he belly flopped on to the ground winding himself and he started to slide....he was sliding down the bank!
    “Shi t !” he yelped as he reached out clawing at the snow franticly trying to stop himself sliding towards the shattered canal. Images of him sliding in