The Dog Stars

So when we get sick of rabbits and sunfish from the pond, I get a deer. Mostly I just want to go up there. It feels like church, hallow and cool. The dead forest swaying and whispering, the green forest full of sighs. The musk smell of deer beds. The creeks where I always pray to see a trout. One fingerling. One big old survivor, his green shadow idling against the green shadows of the stones.

Kinda like The Road but with a dog and a super competent side-kick, and an airplane. And the dog dies. And they shoot a goodly number of guns. The prose (and dialog) is terse and there are no technological advancements, just a USA that has been radically depopulated by a plague. Nonetheless a good story that made it easy to just keep reading in spite of the pervasive melancholy that comes with the post-apocalypse territory.