Norman and Norma at the End of the World: Massacre at Shoe Zone

It was a damp Tuesday afternoon in Woodsham-on-the-Wold, the kind of weather that made your knees ache and your spectacles steam up. The post-apocalypse had done nothing to improve the British climate — zombies roamed the countryside, yes, but drizzle was still the real enemy.

Norman and Norma shuffled into Shoe Zone with the cautious determination of pensioners in pursuit of bargains and arch support. The automatic doors had long since stopped working, so Norman gave them a shove with his walking stick.

“I told you we should’ve brought the trolley,” Norma grumbled, adjusting her lilac cardigan.

“Yep, load up with the old five finger discount.” quipped Norman.

Norma gave him a look over the top of her bifocals, the same look that had once made a gang of looters drop their stolen tins of spam and run crying into the night.

Inside, the store was eerily quiet, apart from the faint drip-drip of water from the leaky ceiling and the distant sound of something groaning.

“That’s not your stomach again, is it?” Norman asked.

Norma shook her head slowly. “No, love. That’s would be the undead.”

“Figures.”

There was a sudden crash from the children’s trainers aisle, and from behind a shelf marked “Velcro Specials — Buy One Get One, a cluster of zombies lurched into view. Their jaws slack, their limbs dragging…