Try visiting one of those shops that cater for builders and labourers (although even a regular DIY store will probably have the stuff). If you are a builder you have to have steel toecaps because of the safety regulations (also because no one wants to tidy up the inevitable vomit that ensues when you finally cut the concrete-slab crushed toes out of non-steel toecapped footwear). Now, in the past that meant all builders wore the same reinforced tough leather clod-hoppers beloved by 1970’s skinheads and the Metropolitan Police Force. But builders are human, too! (No, really, they are, it been proven.) So builders want a little choice in their footwear, just like everyone else. And here we return to the work-person supply shop (or DIY shop). These days there is quite a variety of styles in steel toecapped footwear. You can, for example, buy very tough stuff which looks just like a pair of soft trainers! The teachers will never know (unless you make the mistake of kicking one, which, tempting though it may be, is, for very sound legal reasons, not recommended in this book).

Why might steel toecaps be useful protection against zombies? Well, apart from the greatly reduced likelihood of them nibbling on your toes while you have a little snooze in the middle of history, they provide a simple but effective weapon which you can have with you at all times, but which appears totally innocent, thus failing to attract the attention or incur the wrath of the average petit Hitler who thinks school dress codes are god’s gift to the low ranking fascist. Also, a quick point for those who go to schools with metal detectors on the entrance-ways – for goodness sake, change your school! However, if that is unfortunately not an option, read the small-print on the package for the steel toecapped shoes, because many of them these days are not actually capped with steel but with highly durable, impact resistant polycarbonates – which, rather fortuitously, do not set off the alarms on a metal detector. Either that or claim to have a metal plate in your skull – teachers like that because it means they can tell amusing stories about you in the staff room.

In short, steel (or polycarbonate) toecaps are unobtrusive but very useful weapons (which is why you should avoid using them on teachers, school secretaries, or the disturbingly ubiquitous ‘annoying boy’). They are weapons which you can carry with you to any place without arousing suspicion. Also very handy if your mum drives the car over your foot, which is a lot more common than you might think. It actually happened to someone I know personally (no, not a friend of a friend, a real person who I really know). So it could easily happen to you. And what if your mum drives a bus, eh? Also, for those who find the general concept of ‘sensible shoes’ insulting, steel toecaps take ‘sensible’ to such an extreme that they pass right through ‘practical’ laugh at ‘useful’ and ‘conformist’ and run screaming and gibbering into the general categories of ‘bizarre’ and ‘bat-shit insane’. What more could you want?

Oh, yes, nearly forgot — we have not actually answered the question of whether teachers can actually tell if your shoes have steel toecaps. Well, the answer is yes and no. They can tell if a) you kick them, b) you kick someone else who tells on you (or simply has a broken bone to speak for them) or c) they test the shoe by treading on your toes. The first option depends pretty much on you being stupid enough to kick someone who is simply well worth kicking, rather than a genuine, card-carrying* member of the other team**. However, the third option is quite possible. Any teacher worth their salt can make an excuse for treading on a student’s toes (after all, it’s not as if students have real human rights, is it?). The point here though, is that only the most dedicated oppressor of school inmates would make it their business to ‘accidentally’ tread on the toes of every single student in a school (though I must admit, it is still possible). As such, your job, in terms of maintaining your ability to kick your way out of a tricky undead situation, is to very definitely not arouse any curiosity about your footwear in the murky chambers of what passes for a mind in the average (or even under average) educational specialist (note the use of irony here to mock the brain power and educational nous of the average teacher — who says zombie stuff is not real literature, eh?). Or, in short, keep a low profile, avoid the worst of the teaching staff, and try not to kick anyone who is not virally transformed into a slavering maniac (which, I know can be difficult to distinguish from your average teacher, but that’s why we wrote the section on ‘How to Tell if Your Teacher is a Zombie’).

* obviously, not actually carrying a card, this is figurative language and further evidence of the literary quality of this writing.

** ‘the other team’ is a metaphor, and is therefore further (and quite possibly, conclusive) evidence of the exceptional literary quality of this writing.