Cat muttered the pronouncement as she sat on the tailgate of a pick-up truck and pulled on a pair of her father’s hip waders. The muddy, murky floodwaters lapped at the stack of sandbags some enterprising employee had thought to set up in the grocery store parking lot.

After her epiphany the night before, she hadn’t slept. There was too much planning to do. She’d swung by her parents’ empty house at midnight and raided her father’s fishing gear while talking her favorite location manager into an early morning road trip. They’d left Brooklyn in one of the Kings Construction pickups at dawn and headed north in the rain.

The trip had taken hours longer than usual with road closures and Lauren’s frequent pee breaks. The system, now downgraded to an annoying tropical storm, had pushed further inland, which meant more flooding would be likely for the coastal areas as rivers and creeks pushed their overflow to the ocean.

Cat had parked the pickup in a half-flooded grocery store parking lot where a dozen other civilian vehicles towing boats and carting kayaks were lining up. They’d heard on the radio that New Haven had gotten quite a bit of water too, and that’s where most of the help was focused.

Merry was on its own.

The river had overflowed its banks and taken up residence in the lower end of downtown. But the stalwart New England community was ready to save its own ass.

“You’re not going out there,” Lauren announced, tossing her hair over her shoulder. The woman was seven months pregnant and in no condition to physically stop Cat.

“Lauren, Lauren, Lauren,” Cat tisked. “If I don’t go out there, how will we know how extensive the damage is? This is our chance to put together a real Christmas special here. Something that means something. The network needs to know what a hot mess we’ve got on our hands, or they’ll never agree to it. And Merry will miss out on its biggest source of revenue.”

“Hell to the no.” Lauren shook her head and crossed her arms over her baby bump. “If the insurance company finds out that your fine ass went into waist-deep flood waters you’ll have bigger problems than Christmas decorations.”

They watched as a pickup truck backed a trailer hauling two Jet skis into the murky water. Lauren shook her head. “I can’t believe we’re watching someone launch Jet skis from a ShopRight.”

Cat spotted a flat-bottomed boat trolling down what yesterday had been a street and used her taxi whistle to catch the man’s attention. She waved and he changed directions.

“You are going to get me fired, and then this baby won’t be able to go to college!” Lauren wailed.