Life is precarious, death isn’t always

With all-out war boiling on “The Walking Dead,” the cast is no less on edge than viewers in regard to the show’s scaryhigh mortality rate. “We understand the difference between what’s on the show and what’s off,” says Lennie James, who plays Morgan Jones, the man whose weapon of choice is a wooden staff. “But the stories can get so intense that sometimes after you finish, it’s absolutely necessary for everyone to go out for a drink.

“You want to hang out and shake it off.” The expectation among fans, of course, is that things will only get bloodier when Season 8 of “The Walking Dead” returns Sunday at 9 p.m. on AMC. Rick (Andrew Lincoln), Daryl (Norman Reedus), Carol (Melissa McBride), Maggie (Lauren Cohan), Morgan and the rest of the exhausted, outmanned, outgunned and fractious good guys must try to liberate what’s left of their lives and the world from the evil Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and the Saviors, his band of sneering bullies.

Negan’s idea of re-establishing justice in a world still menaced by hordes of hungry zombies was best demonstrated when he literally bashed in the heads of main characters Glenn (Steven Yuen) and Abraham (Michael Cudlitz).

They’re far from the only sympathetic characters to die.

And at the end of this season’s first half in December, Rick’s son Carl (Chandler Riggs) suffered what to all appearances looks like a fatal zombie bite.

A lot of fans didn’t see that coming. James, 52, says the cast knows the feeling.

“The actors are ‘OMG’ about who