Sci-fi Story Beginning

Here's a little chunk from a novel I'm working on now. It's a sci-fi story, and I'm not entirely sure where it's going from here, but this is what I've got so far.

I strolled into the town with an apple in one hand and a baseball bat in the other. I took a bite of the apple, and looked around. It didn't look like anyone was left here. A flyer for the most recent off Earth shuttle fluttered across the road. I trapped it with the bat and picked it up. They must have all left in it. Towns packing up isn't so unheard of. Last I read eight out of ten people are living off world now. So when someone came out of the house just at the end of my peripheral vision, I was surprised enough that I clenched the apple in my teeth so I could wield the worn baseball with both hands. An old woman shuffled out, the wind whipping at her flowery nightgown.

“Thought I heard someone,” she said, squinting behind thick glasses, “I heard it was bad out there now, but I don’t think you need that here.”

I sheepishly lowered my bat, and gave her a forced smile.

“Why don’t you come in?” She asked before shuffling back to open her screen door. I followed her , shifting the bat back into one hand so I could take the apple from my mouth.

“What are you still doing here? Looks like your whole town took the last shuttle out,” I said, as she led me into a linoleum kitchen. I sat in a creaky wooden chair, and she sat across from me. She took a long sip of the iced tea sitting before her before answering.

“Don’t want to. My whole family lived here, my whole family died here, and I don’t want to die on some shuttle off to some other planet and get tossed out an airlock,” she said, coughing a bit before taking another sip.

“What makes you think you’d die on the shuttle?”

“It’s a five year ride, Missy, I don’t have that long. You do though. What are you still doing here? They could probably use young folks like you on the colonies,” she said, glancing at where my bat was propped against the table.

“I can’t leave. I’ve got a immune system thing. It’s not too bad here, but with all the new viruses off world, and the risk of disease because the shuttles are so packed, I can’t leave,” I said, picking at one of the cracks in the wooden table.

“Oh, I’m sorry hon. So you been around to many places?” she asked, looking at the large pack I’d set down by the table.

“All across the country.”

“And what they said on the radios when the radios worked? Is it all true?”

“That none of the police are still working? That the government all moved off world? Yeah. That’s why I have this,” I said, touching the bat with my fingertips. The woman shuddered a bit, drawing the collar of her nightgown tighter.

“None of the real problems come this far into the country though. It's the cities that are the real problem. You don’t have to worry,” I said, patting her hand once she rested it back onto the table. We paused in silence for a moment. Until I heard a noise riding in on the wind.

“Ma’am, is anyone else in this town?” I asked.

“Just my husband, but he’s in the garden a few houses down,” she said, looking nervously at me.

“He doesn’t drive a car, does he?” I asked, getting up to peer beyond the lacy curtains out of the front window.

“No, we ran out of gas months ago,” she said, following me to the front of the house.

“This might be something bad, this might be nothing, but there’s a group of cars coming up from the east. And they’re booking it,” I said, staring down the road to where a cloud of dirt was quickly growing.