Horror is and always will be my favorite form of media, but I generally avoid stuff that involves zombies. For a while I couldn't make up my mind as to whether I wanted to read The Only Safe Place Left is the Dark due to the fact that it is about a zombie apocalypse, but knowing it is queer horror made me want to check it out. Now I've finally read and I deeply

This novella is about Quinton, a gay man who's HIV positive. For thirty years he has been living alone in a cabin, just waiting to die of his illness. It is while he's living there that the zombie apocalypse occurs. Quinton has had to quietly sneak past the Afflicted (what the zombies are called) to get to pharmacies so he can obtain his medicine.

At the beginning, some men break into the cabin with the intent to steal Quinton's belongings. One of the intruders destroys the pills he has been relying on to stay alive. He is tied to a chair and beaten up, but manages to trick one of his captors into setting him free and proceeds to kill them all. But since his medicine is gone, he has to go out and find more. While he's wandering along a street, he meets Billy, who's also HIV positive. They enter into a sexual and romantic relationship during their journey to a factory that manufactured the medicine they both need. When they get there, they encounter a cult. That is when things get messy and tragic for Billy and Quinton.

The way Billy and Quinton are immune to zombie bites due to their HIV is interesting. Also the fact that the zombies are self-aware in this novella makes them much more terrifying in my opinion. There are some grammatical and continuity errors in this novella, but the compelling story and characters make up for them. This is Warren Wagner's debut novella and I am definitely gonna read anything else he has published in the future.