The debut of Fear the Walking Dead continues to inch closer, like a fresh zombie taking its first reanimated baby steps. Fine, that was a terrible analogy, but the point is that the Walking Dead companion series’ arrival in August now doesn’t seem so far away. Especially when we keep getting new looks at the cast.

Like, say, the three exclusive new images we have right here, along with some scoop from showrunner Dave Erickson. In the photo above, we have Alycia Debnam-Carey, who plays high-achieving teen Alicia. She’s standing on the eerily-empty bleachers of her high school. Where is everyone? Whom is she meeting? And why isn’t that person there? THE APOCALYPSE HAS STARTED, PEOPLE! (Or, maybe not. Maybe it’s just a shot of a girl at her high school.)

Image zoom Justin Lubin/AMC

But that’s not all. We also have new episodic photos of series stars Kim Dickens (as widowed guidance counselor—and Alicia’s mom—Madison) and Cliff Curtis (as high-school teacher—and Madison’s boyfriend—Travis) looking ever so pensive. Showrunner Dave Erickson tells EW that the characters—as opposed to the zombies—in this show will be key, and we’ll get a bit of time to meet them in their normal lives before all hell breaks loose.

“Ultimately, it’s a family drama,” says Erickson. “One of the things that Robert [Kirkman] and I discussed from the very beginning was, we’re starting a little earlier in the apocalypse. And what that allowed us to do in the pilot and season 1 is establish our core family, establish the problems and the conflicts that they have, and really let that be the initial world that we live in. And we layer in the onset of the apocalypse, we layer in our first walkers, but it’s really an effort to exacerbate the problems that already exist with Kim Dickens’ character and Cliff Curtis’ character and their sort of dysfunctional blended family. It’s really filtering the apocalypse through that.”

Image zoom Justin Lubin/AMC

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