When a new and potentially planet-killing contagion is discovered, Moon Shadow, an isolated resort town located in Alaska's primitive and rugged interior, becomes the focus of a military-style incursion.

Major Pepper, who is in charge of the operation, has the local residents rounded up into a razor-wire inclosed quarantine. Because of the danger of a potential pandemic, they are to be transferred to a more prison-like underground quarantine.

Two of the residents, Trevor, a young physician, and Jodie, an Earth Project environmentalist, are not having any of this obvious violation of human rights. They escape and are hunted down like fugitives with the full arsenal of the US Army at the Major's disposal. The two have to use a zip line to escape a three-story-burning lodge. When they seek refuge in an abandoned gold mine, the entrance is caved in by a missile strike.

The two fugitives do manage to find a way out of the mine and try to make their way back to civilization and safety by floating down river on a rubber raft. While fighting for their lives against nature and the deranged Major Pepper, the two begin to fall in love with each other. They discover they have more to live for than exposing the Major for his treachery and his murder of innocent civilians for the greater good.