ADAK: a novel of an apocalypse

by Keith Minnion

When a dormant volcano on a remote Aleutian island suddenly erupts, it unleashes an ancient pathogen long buried beneath the earth. Within days, this archaevirus proceeds to kill everyone it infects, in every location the survivors are taken for treatment, first the Naval Air Station on the nearby island of Adak, and then the closest military base on the mainland. Vaccines will be months away, so the key is containment, quarantine, and secrecy, at whatever the cost.

As the everyday life on Adak’s Naval Air Station spirals into the chaos of a full-on pandemic, both the military and civilian population rush to contain the outbreak, while the news of its swift and unstoppable lethality is kept secret from the rest of the world.

In a relentless race against time, LT Gil Lewis and LTJG Bobbi McIntyre, the two main characters, are thrown together first as colleagues, and then as lovers, realizing they are among the very few left to fight the odds, avoid betrayal from within from both the military and civilian survivors, and safeguard the future of mankind against a foe that had rested, undisturbed, for over a half-billion years. But as the clock ticks down, the price of survival may just be the ultimate sacrifice.

ADAK is a heart-pounding military thriller that delves into the ethical nightmares of science and warfare, of friends becoming foes, reminding us of the fine line between survival and death in a world teetering on the brink of annihilation.

327 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 30, 2025

About the author

Keith Minnion sold his first short story to Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine in 1979. He has sold over two dozen stories, two novelettes, an art book of his best published illustrations, two story collections, and one novel since. Keith was a book designer and illustrator from the early 1990s to the 2010s, and also did extensive graphic design work for the Department of Defense. He is a former schoolteacher, DOD project manager, and officer in the U.S. Navy. He currently lives in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, pursuing oil and watercolor painting, and sometimes even fiction writing.