Happy Holidays!

Something shimmering and heavy hit Nikolai's side of the jeep with a force that cracked metal, and in that split second before the jeep overturned and they all went spilling out onto the ground, onto the road, Nikolai felt something right beside his head, something that made a growling-clicking sound that made him scream, and behind it the sensation of great weight and a smell like rotting meat so that he steeled himself for a blow, but no blow came, just the delicate scrape of a clawed hand across his face, receding as the changed momentum of the jeep and his own inertia carried him away from the creature, and he cried out again as time released him and he was thrown clear, so relieved, so happy to be away from that awful alien presence that he didn't care if he lived or died.