23 april 2025, @mariannewest's Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2715: What Is Gold Worth ?

This post was inspired by today's 5-minute writing prompt in the Freewriters Community - The Last Treasurer

Enjoy !

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As he turned both keys and spun the wheel to randomise the vault combination, sirens started to wail outside, rising and falling in a multi-tonal cacophony.

Four minutes. I'm not sure why I'm bothering to lock the vault after me. Habit, I guess. he thought to himself, slipping the gold bar into his pocket.

Briskly, but without running, he moved down the corridor and descended two flights of steps, from the bank's basement, to it's sub-basement.

There, he found another massive door. It was just starting to close.

"Hold up !" he called. "Wait for me !"

The man pulling on the heavy door hesitated. "Who are you ? Why should we let you in ?"

"I'm Pierre Lefitte. Last treasurer of the Bank of Cholet."

"So ?"

Pierre pulled the gold bar from his pocket. "Does this help you decide whether to let me in ?" he asked.

The man took the bar silently, pulled Pierre in and resumed closing the two-foot thick door, with more of a sense of urgency now.

Pierre looked at his watch. Sixty seconds left.

He thought to himself with sadness that the fool closing the door had nothing. In less than a minute, the missiles from Tarkus would arrive. The city would be vaporised. If the vault survived at all, the gold bars would be turned to lead. And a gold bar in a radioactive wasteland, or down here in one of the few fallout shelters, would be worthless.