The novel “Damnation Alley” by Roger Zelazny was published for the first time in 1969. It’s an extension of a novella published in 1967.

Hell Tanner is a criminal who’s ruthless even by the standards of the territories that used to be the USA before a nuclear war led to their fragmentation. When he gets caught, he can expect no leniency but is offered the chance to receive a pardon if he agrees to transport a shipment of vaccines from Los Angeles to Boston, where an epidemic is striking the population hard.

Assisted by a crew of volunteers, Hell Tanner drives a group of three armored cars with a large array of weapons of various kinds. The crossing of North America holds a series of dangers in a post-apocalyptic world where the climate has gone mad, geography has been altered, flora and fauna have changed at times monstrously, and there are always other human beings ready to cut the throats to anyone if they think they can get something from them.