Just down the road from a tiny country church in rural Georgia, the apocalypse has already arrived. A band of scrappy survivors is fighting the undead, camping in the woods in hopes of outrunning the hordes of zombies roaming the world. Few of them have made it, and at any moment they could be eaten alive and turned into one of the monsters that haunt them day and night.

It’s just another day on the set of “The Walking Dead,” the hit AMC series that starts its second season Sunday (9 p.m. EDT) with 13 horrifying new episodes. Based on the popular comic book of the same name by writer Robert Kirkman, the show is about life after the zombie apocalypse.