Read Part 2 first if you haven't yet.

Finally, after 45 minutes of walking in total, I get to the edge of the street. I approach the street lamp and look at it. It's a completely ordinary streetlamp besides the botched wiring, but somehow being near it is comforting. Maybe it's that it's a reminder of a world that just was, so recent and familiar, but will never be again. The puttering of the generator also serves as a nice way to break up the monotony of the worm's rumbling that has since become our world's universal background noise.

I look around to see if I can catch what I thought was moving earlier, but the only thing here besides the lamp and the generator is the car, which is completely stationary and not running. I walk up to it and feel the hood. It's cold.

I look into the front driver's side window and see nothing of note. Some fast food boxes and napkins in the passenger seat. An air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror. The clear plastic window in front of the dash is foggy, the faux leather wrapping the steering wheel is worn. I walk around the front of the car and look into the front passenger's side window to see the same unremarkable sight from a different angle. I continue walking to the back window, and what I see there makes me stop in my tracks.

It's you. I found you, Lina.

Your body. Your dead body. Your pale, nude, lacerated dead body with scrawlings all over it in black Sharpie, repeating the same words over and over again: "SPARE US".

I try with all my might to throw open the car door, but it's locked. I continue trying different things in the vain hope I can throw open this door and get a closer look, try to get some answers. I jiggle the handle. I punch the window with full force. I throw my whole body at the door. No dice, all I did was give myself a nasty bruise on my knuckles and my side. I look around to see if I can find something, anything to help me get this door open. It's all I care about at this point.

I catch something I missed earlier out of the corner of my eye. A pile of trash, bits of metal and cardboard. It would be silly to think that anything in that pile could help me, but I'm desperate. I dig through it and miraculously find my savior: a spark plug. A friend in middle school taught me this trick. I smash the porcelain cover of the plug against the curb and pick up the biggest piece that fell to the ground. I rush back to the car and throw the piece at the window of the rear driver's side door. Bingo. Broken glass is all over the back seat and the car alarm is going off but I couldn't care less. I reach in and open the door from the inside.

I lift your cold, lifeless head and look into your glassy eyes. A million thoughts stream through my head. This can't be real. How could anyone have done this to you? I look at the deep cuts on your arms and neck and think of how disappointed I am in my own species that we would resort back to the practice of human sacrifice. We should be smarter than this. We evolved past this, or so I thought. For a brief moment, I feel an intense anger, then an anxiety I haven't felt in years. I wish for time to turn back. I pray to God that he would give me some miracle, anything at all to bring you back, even for just one minute so we could say our last words to each other. Realizing none of this would happen, a deep sadness washes over me. And then, just as quickly as they came, the feelings fade, and I'm back as I was: an emotionless, unfeeling husk.

I realize, like with the worm, it was inevitable and nothing can be done about it now. I realize I'm holding nothing more than a cold hunk of carbon. I realize that what I'm looking at is a reflection of what my body will be someday, and because of that nothing that happens in this world truly matters. This isn't you. The paper I'm writing all this down on is more you than this body is. I drop the head back on the cushion of the back seat and walk away from the car.

And I keep walking down the road. Where am I going? I don't know. Why am I doing this? I don't know. Is there any meaning to be found in it? Probably not. But it's something to do.