Black Tide

Jake Strom, salvage diver, is a Reuseable. Not by choice. Would you be?

 In his third horror novel, BLACK TIDE, john g rees takes you on a forward journey back in time. Back in time to the beginning for Jake Strom, before he becomes a Reuseable. We meet Jake before this recruitment becomes the only alternative. Megacorp, in control for years, was taking men like Jake, with their knowledge in their hands and head. 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.

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. They were making Reuseables and working them to death, bringing them back to life to be used again. To be reused again and again.

The quest for profits already left the planet, as a biosphere, crippled. Now it was doing the same thing to people’s minds. 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. 

This 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. 


 The epic tale comes full circle with this macabre prequel of corporate greed and the life of one man, hopelessly entangled with the bottom line and a cruel form of servitude. 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.