To Find a Dog

This is the first story I've written and posted here. I hope you like it.

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It was summer, the birds were singing, the wind was calmly blowing by, and the town was quiet. Not a soul wandering by for it was deserted, wrecked, left to be remembered as what once was and will never be again. Although it was deserted a man lay in the grass of a park all alone and unaware of what had happened several days before. I believe he may have fallen unconscious during those days and has been surprisingly left alone in this park unharmed. He stirs slowly and stares at the sky for a moment, he then looks to his right and left, confused as to where he is. He then sits up.

“Where am I?” He says out loud seeing that there is no one present to answer his question. 

“You’re in Michigan young man.” An Old feminine voice says behind him. He startles and looks behind himself to find an old woman there looking at him boredly. “You’ve been there for a few days. I’m surprised that the dog didn’t stay any longer.” She then turns and walks away from him and begins across the empty street. The man sits there for a moment confused at what the woman said, he gets up finding his legs a bit shaky from long unuse. 

“What dog? Excuse me, Lady?!” He goes after the lady across the street now standing by an old shopping cart filled with boxes. “You were talking about a dog? Do I have a dog?” The old lady hums in thought as she looks through the boxes. 

“Yes you have a dog, at least I think it is your dog,” She pulls out a cookbook, an unhappy burnt piece of toast on the cover with the words ‘you suck at cooking’ as the title. “He was a sweet dog, protecting you until two days ago. He seemed to have gone after something I think.” The man watches her put the book back in the box and looks in another one. “My name is Eleanor by the way, what’s your name young man?” He looks at Eleanor still a bit confused. 

“My name?”

“Yes your name. Don’t you have one?”

“Uh, yeah. I go by Texas.”

“Alright Texas, you’ll want to head east to find your dog.”

“Uh okay.” He looked around, figuring out which direction was east; then he turned back to Eleanor. “Eleanor, what happened to this town?” Eleanor looked up from the boxes, a look of surprise on her face. 

“You don’t know? Why everyone should know, all of America knows.”

Texas felt a little ashamed at not knowing what everyone clearly knew. But he still waited patiently for an answer.

“A virus called: I don’t care what it’s called,” Texas was amused at the sass in Eleanor’s voice. “It was released out of a lab and started infecting people in California and led to all hell being unleashed.” Eleanor looked bored with the conversation already as she gestured wildly to the town. “As you can see, this town is dead. Not a soul wandering by alone unless they are looking to get robbed by some drifters.” Eleanor then turned away from Texas and moved along to a different box. “People who were infected attacked those who weren’t. It was gruesome really, watching your neighbors try and break in your house to rip your face off or whatever. But now it seems to have calmed down a bit. I think.” He nodded in understanding. Texas should have been surprised but for some reason the way that Eleanor spoke kept him calm throughout the explanation. Eleanor turned back to him. “Get going! You don’t have all day to look so get started, the sun won’t be up forever.” She pointed in a direction for him to go.