[center][b]Carrying the Torch[/b][/center]

Doctor Kyle Jackson sat on a rock; circled by his colleagues. Grimy lab coats, thick framed glasses, stethoscopes, surgical aprons - they were the last of a dead profession. Science and medicine had taken a heavy blow, and with the homeland lost, perhaps along with the rest of the continent, the surviving members of the Vanguard Research Initiative were all that remained of humanity's hope against the plague. This fact was not lost on the Doctor, and his beady eyes looked coldly at everyone. Analyzing. Weighing. Deciding. 

"Okay," he croaked, "this is all we have?" 

Jenny nodded, "the others have fled into the jungle."

"Fools. Already dead, more than likely. So primitive, is it to run away from destruction without a moment spared for thought," snapped Kyle. 

"At least we have the vaccine," said Sadiir, the foreign nurse. Kyle liked this man; agreed with his ethics and overriding sense of the bigger picture. It didn't matter that he hailed from the poverty-stricken South, a sound mind was a sound mind. 

"This is true, but so little of it, alas," conceded Kyle bitterly. "Thousands of phials have been left behind in the bunker. What we have now is so little it's barely worth mentioning."

Jenny shifted uncomfortably on the rock next to Kyle; her sodden blonde curls plastered to her shoulders with the air's humidity. "Did we get them all?" she ventured. 

Kyle nodded, "yes, the plaguers are dead. We've been over this; no one would have escaped our watch unseen." 

"I know, but - how many quarantin-" 

"ENOUGH," shouted Kyle; spittle flying into Jenny's freckled face. "I wont be spoken down to by an overly elaborated [i]nurse[/i]."

"Fuck you," screeched Jenny, rising from the rock and brushing herself as if to rid any races of him from her overalls. "You're a fucking idiot." 

Kyle sighed, scratching his head. He looked up at her and smiled sympathetically, "it's okay Matron, I know you're not responsible for the hormones raging through your body. Shriek and scream all you want at me, I will not take it to heart. Come back to me when you're over your... internal cleansing." 

"Un-fucking-believable," she hissed, storming away from the group; the other women present lent her no visible support, nor showed dismay at Kyle. 

"Good. Let us get down to business; what are the most pressing needs of survival?" He asked, pulling out a notepad and a pencil. 

"Shelter, I can sense a storm coming," grunted Sadiir, nodding over to a bunch of gathering grey clouds off in the distance. 

"Good, good, what else?" 

"Water, we have little," said a lanky surgeon of senior years.

"Yes, yes, of course. Food, how are we for food?" 

"Zilch. We have nothing, save for a few tins of beans I found in the wreck," said a burly man, dressed in the navy blue of the science team's security detail. 

Kyle removed his glasses, and rubbed his sinuses in irritation, before looking back up, "so we lack all three of the basic survival requirements? That's fantastic, novel really." 

"Shelter first," said Sadiir; his pearly white eyes peering out from his dark skin almost menacingly. "The human body can go-" 

"Yes, yes, I know. We have five days to get the water sorted, two weeks to get the food sorted, but three hours before the rain hits us," snorted Kyle, putting away his notepad. "Options?"

"The wreck?" asked the aged surgeon. 

"Fuck that, there might still be infected in there," shouted someone hysterically. 

"The jungle, those trees'll give us cover," said another. 

"Trees sounds like a good idea," said Kyle, nodding slowly. "Well, there's nothing for it. Grab the stuff, and follow me - let's carry the torch of humanity away from the rains of despair."

"You're such a fucking snobby, socially inept prick," called Jenny from somewhere afar.

 Kyle snickered despite himself.