Black Tide

john g rees takes you on a journey back in time with his third horror novel BLACK TIDE. Back in time to the beginning for Jake Strom. Megacorp has been in control for years. Only the old remember a time before the small corporation rose from the ashes of a destroyed world economy during the early 21st century and became the dominant player, in control of most of the world.
   Jake Strom is a commercial diver, a little older than the few new divers who were still willing to play the game. In his late thirties, he was still at the top of the dive roster. Age, experience and an old school work ethic made him a wanted man, in more sinister ways than the ones that usually comes to mind.
   Megacorp didn’t coin the term ‘black ops’, but the one they brought into being was darker than anyone could imagine. After a time of trial and err the recruits began filling cold steel slabs. Megacorp was laying in a workforce; not only to maintain the failing infrastructure of the planet, but to do the black work, the wet work, that comes along with being a black op for the biggest power on earth.
   In this ‘freaquel’, we meet Jake before recruitment becomes the only alternative. The tales ahead give us a taste of Jake. The joys of living are felt at the same time this nightmare insinuates itself into his life. It doesn’t take long before his fate lies beneath a few layers of tie-dyed fabric along with the life and death choices and consequences that his future will hold.
    Diver, dope smuggler, junkie, killer on demand, and a life that just will not end. It’s not the way it started or the way he wanted it to be. Things just kind of worked out that way for Jake. A reader by inclination he became a commercial diver to satisfy the other side of his nature. Jake was good at what he does, better than most you might say, with a work ethic to back it up. But when has being at the top of your game ever condemned you to do it forever or turn the work inside out and make it something evil? It happens all the time except the forever thing. Unfortunately for Jake he got all of the above with an unforgiving and brutal learning curve.
The quest for profits already left the planet, as a biosphere, crippled. Now it was doing the same thing to people’s mind’s. Siphoning off the skills they wanted to keep the planet running, Megacorp turned the rest of the population into domesticated consumers. Instant gratification ruined them, leaving behind a coke monkey mentality that was a button push away from satisfaction. And was one hell of a profit maker. 
   Men, like Jake, with their knowledge in their hands were being taken. The consumer mentality came at a cost. The virtual world was scarfing up everyone. No one wanted to be or to do anything anymore, outside the box that is. We had begun living a virtual existence. Unfortunately all the apps in the world can’t fix a leaky pipe.
Hang on for another macabre ride as Jake comes to terms, sort of, with what he has become while he does the bidding of men whose minds are twisted with greed.
  This is as dark a tale as john g rees have ever written, for the black holes of men’s souls are as dark as it gets. There are, however, points of light, though fleeting, wherein Jake gets a chance to understand the meaning of life and friendship while becoming a monster of Megacorp’s creation.
Black Tide is the third book in the ‘anoxic zone’ series. We meet Jake while he is still a ‘normal diver’, following him through the boredom and adventures that come with a life of commercial diving. After a few incidents where Jake unknowingly comes face to face with his future, the future – never all that patient – comes to him. Jake will soon discover what hell is like, becoming it in order to survive. He meets Johnny for the first time and the tall Italian aids Jake, with a certain dark savoir faire, through the hell business. It wasn’t much, just barely enough to save Jake from choking on the chain that was placed around his neck. The trick was not losing your mind. Which is much more difficult than it sounds when you discover your life has been taken away and replaced with… hell everlasting