Watch the Unnerving First Three Minutes of Fear the Walking Dead

Fear the Walking Dead is almost here, and those of you who have been dying to see it can now get a (severed) head start on the series.

AMC shared the first three minutes of its forthcoming companion to The Walking Dead yesterday, posting an exclusive video to Facebook. The intriguing clip comes in advance of this weekend’s much-anticipated Fear the Walking Dead series premiere.

The video follows young Nick Clark (Frank Dillane, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) as he awakens in and explores an abandoned church that appears to have turned into some kind of indoor shantytown/drug den. Nick, dressed in what one might possibly construe as a shirt, stumbles along through the dilapidated and desolate house of God, looking like half a walker himself. Nick attempts to get his bearings and track down his missing lady friend Gloria while bloodstains, distant screams and an unsettling score ratchet up the tension.

Spoiler alert: poor Gloria is a walker—perhaps the first in The Walking Dead universe—and though we don’t get to see what happens next, it’s easy to imagine she gets well-acquainted with the business end of the candlestick Nick is wielding . All told, the clip is a clear echo of The Walking Dead’s first scene, in which Rick encountered a zombified little girl. Both shows begin with images of innocence despoiled, and nerve-fraying, face-to-face encounters with the undead—one hopes these scenes aren’t all the two series have in common.

Fear the Walking Dead premieres this Sunday, Aug. 23 at 9 p.m. EDT. Watch the first three minutes of the series above.