As far as english technicalities go, it would be superb for a normal person, solid for a writer, and bad enough for an editor that you’d be taken out behind the chemical sheds. So right about where you want to be I suspect. I strongly recommend acquiring an editor, even if just a hobiest with the promise of many free dinners.

Now the prose, that’s where I think you could refine this story a bit more. Specifically I want to bring up your mention of too long and too short. I think what makes if feel too long is the number of sentences describing the same thing. Particularly how empty, desolate, and degraded things have become. I think you might be more satisfied if you removed a lot of sentences reaffirming these themes and replaced them with just a few key adjectives and adverbs thrown in here and there. Once you establish how dreary things are the nature of the story is enough to keep most of that atmosphere, in my humble opinion. I really suspect you could remove something like one in four sentences from this thing without giving up even a single detail. And that in turn might give you the room to detail more of the journey in the way you want. Though I’d personally be tempted simply to leave it a leaner meaner version and call that enough.

Please, take all that with a massive grain of salt given that I’m certainly no writer myself, just an artist who’s been trained to give constructive criticism whenever requested to the point where he can’t help himself.

-Suni