Free The Remedy by Asher Ellis Page B

walking directly behind Eliza, who was now lightly raking her fingers horizontally across her fresh cut.
    “I wouldn’t touch that,” Leigh warned. “You’ll get it dirty.”
    Eliza stopped and turned to face Leigh, a look of excruciating discomfort distorting her face. “I know, but I can’t help it,” Eliza whined. “It really itches.”
    “Just hold on a few more minutes. I’ll help you clean it when we get to this cabin, or whatever it is.”
    Eliza nodded and reluctantly removed her hand from her neck. But before she turned back to continue the hike, Leigh’s head jerked, what she saw on her friend’s skin causing her to do a double-take.
    To Leigh’s amazement, it looked as if the cut had already started to show signs of infection. The flesh surrounding the laceration was discolored, a few shades darker than the rest of Eliza’s throat. But the abnormal coloration didn’t at all resemble the usual pinkish hue of agitated tissue. Even red or purple splotching, though probably a call for concern, would’ve been less alarming: what Leigh saw was startling enough to draw her eyebrows up to her hairline and leave her mouth hanging open.
    Eliza’s skin was tinted green.
Green
.
    Leigh inhaled to say something about her peculiar observation, but decided to shut her mouth about it instead. It had only been a glance, and her perception of the color spectrum must be suffering as a result of the stormy skies.
    Satisfied with this logic, Leigh followed her three companions to the safe haven of a dry shelter, convinced she’d been mistaken.

Chapter 7
    Frigid water numbed all five of Marshall’s toes as his sandaled foot fell into another rain-filled pothole. He and Alex trudged along in search of Miller’s Road, their feet making wet, squishy noises with every step.
    It was hard to believe how drastically the tables had turned on Marshall Thomas. It felt like only minutes ago that he had been basking in the celebration of having a van to shield him from the elements while Rob and the others miserably marched through the drenching, autumn rainstorm. Now here he was: on foot as well and probably getting even wetter than the rest of his friends since he didn’t have any tree branches to provide protection from the falling rain. And damn it all to hell, they still had that weed, too. All he had was a girlfriend so furious she was making PMS look like a good mood.
    She did have a right to be upset; Marshall could admit that much. After they’d discovered the circular saw blade—probably the same one that had been used to chop down the road sign—Alex had initially reacted calmly.
    “Well,” she said, shrugging as he tossed the round, jagged blade into the brush, “we can just put the spare on, right?”
    That’s when it got bad.
    “Um…” Marshall didn’t want to say what he was about to. He could already feel the storm about to break, and it wasn’t from the dark clouds above. “Rob didn’t pack the spare.”
    For a moment, Alex stared at him as if he’d just spoken in a foreign language.
    “What?”
    Marshall’s eyes drifted to the tops of the swaying trees. The horrible moment had come.
    “He took it off to make room for the keg.”
    “You have
got
to be kidding!” Alex screamed, her voice booming above the rumbling thunder that had just arrived.
    But it was true. Rob had removed the spare tire from the rear door of the van and instead used the harness to attach a keg of Molson he’d purchased while in Montreal. The spare had been left outside the brewing company headquarters on the St. Lawrence River after the conclusion of their booze-filled tour. The girls had been out shopping in the meanwhile, and Rob had bet Marshall that none of the ladies would notice the switch until they reached home.
    “I
cannot
believe you agreed to that!” Alex yelled, even louder. She’d started in on the arm gestures, too.
    “What! We agreed that if we got into any trouble we could just hire a mechanic and